New Delhi: Emphasising that a judgment “must make sense to those whose lives and affairs are affected by the outcome of the case”, the Supreme Court has set aside an “incomprehensible” decision of the Himachal Pradesh High Court.
A bench comprising justices D.Y. Chandrachud and A.S. Bopanna observed that “incoherent judgments have a serious impact upon the dignity of judicial institutions”, and asserted that while judges “may have their own style of judgment writing, they must ensure lucidity in writing across these styles”.
The bench further said that confidence in the judicial process is predicated on the trust which its written word generates. “If the meaning of the written word is lost in language, the ability of the adjudicator to retain the trust of the reader is severely eroded.”
The SC judgment, delivered on 16 August, said that court verdicts should carry paragraph numbers, as this “allows for ease of reference and enhances the structure, improving the readability and accessibility of the judgments”. It also spoke about the need for a table of contents in longer judgments.
Stressing on the need to write an easy-to-understand analysis of complex legal issues, the judgment written by Justice Chandrachud said, “The purpose of judicial writing is not to confuse or confound the reader behind the veneer of complex language. The judge must write to provide an easy-to-understand analysis of the issues of law and fact which arise for decision. Judgments are primarily meant for those whose cases are decided by judges.”
The order also said that judgments of the high courts and the Supreme Court also serve as precedents to guide future benches.
The bench further noted that the apex court has had to send back cases to high courts earlier as well, because the judgments could not be understood. It then spoke extensively about judgment writing and the importance of providing reasons for a conclusion in a judgment.
The Himachal Pradesh High Court order under contention was passed in 2020 by a bench comprising justices Sureshwar Thakur and Chander Bhusan Barowalia, and was written by Justice Thakur.
The case concerned disciplinary proceedings initiated by the State Bank of India (SBI) in 2013 against one of its employees, Ajay Kumar Sood, based on allegations that he had misbehaved with a branch manager, used abusive language against him and disrupted smooth functioning of the branch, among others. The inquiry officer had found Sood guilty of all charges, and had dismissed him from service in November that year.
Sood challenged his termination before the Central Government Industrial Tribunal. While this tribunal found Sood to be guilty of misbehaving with the manager, it found the penalty of dismissal to be “harsh and disproportionate”. It, therefore, modified the punishment to compulsory retirement in July 2019. The Himachal Pradesh High Court upheld this order in November 2020.
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Not the first time
The Supreme Court was hearing an appeal challenging the Himachal High Court judgment.
The apex court had issued notice on this appeal in March last year, while observing that the reasons given out by the high court “span over eighteen pages but are incomprehensible”.
On 16 August, the SC set aside the high court judgment, repeating the complaint of it being “incomprehensible”, and sent the case back to the high court to consider it afresh. Since the case dates back to 2013, the SC requested the high court to hear the petitions expeditiously.
One of the sentences in the HC judgment said, “The ire res-controversia, erupting interse the litigants, appertains, to findings, adversarial, to the workman, becoming returned upon charge No. 1.”
Another 161 word-long sentence in the high court judgment read: “Be that as it may, since the impugned award, is made, in pursuance to a petition filed, before the learned Tribunal, by the Workman, under Section 2-A, of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, and, when after affording, the, fullest adequate opportunities, to the contesting litigants, to adduce their respective evidence(s), on the issues, falling for consideration, the learned Tribunal proceeded to make the impugned award, (i) thereupon the effect, if any, or the legal effect, of, Annexure P-18, inasmuch as, it containing evidence, in support of the conclusion(s), borne therein, does, emphatically, become(s) subsumed, within the canvas, and, contours, of, the evidence adduced, respectively, by the workman, and, by the employer, before the learned Tribunal, (ii) unless evidence emerged through the witnesses’, who testified before the learned Tribunal, and, upon theirs being confronted with their statement(s), previously made before the Inquiry Officer, and, its making unearthing(s), vis-à-vis, hence no credibility, being assigned, vis-à-vis, theirs respective testification(s), made before the learned Tribunal.”
This isn’t the first time that Justice Thakur, now a judge in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, has been pulled up for the language used in his judgments. On at least three other occasions in the past, the language he used in his orders drew the ire of the Supreme Court.
For instance, looking into one of his judgments passed in 2017, the SC had earlier this year said that the order was “as incomprehensible as Latin”.
In 2017, another Supreme Court bench had pulled up the HC judge, noting that “it is not possible to comprehend the contents” of the judgment, which used phrases like “hereat wherewithin”.
In December 2018, the court had once again highlighted the importance of “brevity” in writing judgments, when Justice Thakur wrote a 60-page order.
Accessibility for the disabled
On the issue of clarity in judgments, the apex court further said that while many believe that people are often concerned only with the outcome of the case and not the reasoning, “the work of a judge cannot be reduced to a statistic about the disposal of a case”.
“Reasons are crucial to the legitimacy of a judge’s work. They provide an insight into judicial analysis, explaining to the reader why what is written has been written. The reasons, as much as the final conclusion, are open to scrutiny,” it added.
The court observed that brevity “is an unwitting victim of an overburdened judiciary” and “is also becoming a victim of the cut-copy-paste convenience afforded by software developers”.
The bench further emphasised on accessibility, saying that judgments should be accessible to persons from all sections of society, especially those with disability. For instance, it said that all judicial institutions must ensure that judgments and orders being published by them do not have improperly placed watermarks as they end up making the documents inaccessible for persons with visual disability who use screen readers to access them.
It further said that the practice of scanning printed versions of judgments to upload them online should be avoided, because they make the judgments inaccessible.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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